On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization

by Douglas Murray

If these leaders had simply been corrupt, that might have been one thing—and the oldest story imaginable. And it is true that every dollar they stole was money that could have been used to actually improve the lives of Palestinians. Instead of buying weapons, building tunnels for terrorists, and living the high life in Doha they might have actually created the Singapore on the Mediterranean that so many people hoped for when Gaza was handed to the Palestinians in 2005. Yet while they stole money on an international scale, Gaza until 2023 was not what the Hamas spokespeople abroad said it was. For years the journalist Tom Gross updated an online list of the luxuries and attractions available to people in Gaza. Even in 2010, while Western media talked about a place that constituted one great humanitarian catastrophe, Gaza boasted fancy restaurants, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and shopping malls. As even the Lonely Planet guidebook noted, at the Roots Club in Gaza you could “dine on steak au poivre and chicken cordon bleu.” Hamas very much ran things their own way, for instance on one occasion burning to the ground a UN-run summer camp for Palestinian children, and threatening the UN staff with murder because it was deemed “un-Islamic.” But still the living standards in Gaza were high for the region.